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One of the most popular Android smartphones in India, the Samsung Galaxy S, has been discontinued according to multiple dealers. We checked in Delhi and multiple dealers claim that the phone is out of stock and Samsung has discontinued the product. We have been able to confirm through secondary sources that a similar situation exists in Bangalore.

It sounds unreal as the Galaxy S is Samsung’s flagship Android smartphone and has been quite popular with consumers. Even the dealers we spoke to sounded frustrated as they still get customers asking for the Galaxy S. Meanwhile, Samsung claims that it has already shipped over 9.3 million units of the smartphone globally, marginally short of its target of doing 10 million units by the end of 2010. (Who knows, it might be able to achieve it thanks to the Holiday shopping spree across Europe and the US.)

Coming back to the Galaxy S story in India, could it be that Samsung is now preparing to launch the Nexus S in India? We know for sure that Samsung has plans to launch the Nexus S in India but not even in our wildest dreams did we imagine that it could be this early.

Before some of our “admirers” jump the gun and call this story fake, we are not making any claims when Samsung would launch the Nexus S over here. We are just trying to put things into perspective and giving a likely possible scenario.

Our hat tip to our good ol’ friend Tushar for sharing the situation in Bangalore. Don’t forget to share with us in the comments if your friendly neighbourhood cellphone retailer is also claiming that the Galaxy S has been discontinued.

Carrying on from the first part of our Samsung Galaxy S review, we thought it would be a good idea to share a sample of its video recording capabilities. We shot this short clip from a moving car in Delhi. It is certainly not the best scenario to shoot a video, it gives a decent idea about its performance. We will be uploading more videos shot from the Samsung Galaxy S when we come to reviewing its multimedia capabilities. So far, we are pretty impressed with what we see and it is without any doubt among the best Android smartphones for multimedia users (notwithstanding that it has a 5.0 MP camera while the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 has an 8.0 MP shooter).

With Android being the flavour of the season and every handset brand trying to outdo the others by launching high-profile smartphones, it is becoming difficult to keep a track of which phone deserves to be crowned “the best of the best.” In March, I gave that title to the Motorola Milestone, which offered the best combination of form, function and features at a great price. And three months down the line, it seems the Milestone is likely to be dethroned by the new phone in town – the Samsung Galaxy S.

The Galaxy S i9000 starts to overwhelm right from the word go. First impressions are formed while checking out its specifications that scream out a 4.0 inch display, a 1 GHz processor, a 5.0 MP camera that can shoot videos in 720p HD and all this in a frame less than 10 mm thin and weighing just 118 gram! Yup, this one is ready for the runway. While the front is dominated by the display and a couple of soft-touch keys and a ‘home button’; the back is made of glossy plastic that houses the 5.0 MP camera and a tiny speaker.

With specifications out of the way, let’s take a look at the extent of customisation that Samsung has done on the stock Android UI. While I tend to prefer the stock Android UI like the one found on the Milestone, I understand that there are lot of people out there who’d prefer having something more fancy and attractive. Samsung has done a fair bit of skinning on top of Android though not as much as HTC’s Sense UI, which I believe is a good thing. On the bottom of the display are four non-configurable shortcuts – phone, contacts, messaging and applications – making it easy to access the phone functions from any screen. The applications shortcut basically opens the ‘drawer menu’ in the stock Android UI. Rather than having applications open in one never-ending vertical scroll UI, Samsung has customised it to open in horizontal pages with each screen housing a maximum of 16 icons. However, users cannot change the order in which these icons would appear (it turns out the the location of icons can be customised by pressing the menu button and selecting edit while in the applications menu). Samsung has also added some cool widgets like the ‘Accuweather Clock’ widget shown in this pic and a ‘Buddies Now’ widgets where you can add your buddies and see their latest Facebook status messages, comment on their status and call or text message them directly from the home screen.

The Galaxy S runs on Android 2.1 aka Eclair and though this version of Android automatically links your phonebook contact’s Google and Facebook (among other social networks) identities, Samsung adds more customisation to it. Not only can you choose which Facebook friends you would like to see on your phone but you can also see their recent updates and media uploads from a variety of places. Apart from the phonebook, you can also see the latest updates of all your friends from the phone menu or only selected friends through the ‘Buddy Now’ widget. In short, one does not really require a standalone Facebook app on the Galaxy S.

This is the end of the first part of our Samsung Galaxy S review. In the next part of the review, we will cover our user experience of the device and its multimedia capabilities. If you have any queries regarding the Galaxy S, do let us know in comments below and we will try to answer them in the next part of the review.